The always-industrious Mary May has set up a special website where you can get updates on her forthcoming book, “The Acanthus Leaf: A Rite of Passage for the Classical Carver.”
Simply go to acanthusbook.com and you can sign up for the e-mail updates.
Mary has turned in a completed sample chapter with illustrations and photos and things are looking very good. We’re not exactly sure when this book will be released, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have news.
— Christopher Schwarz
The writer of a popular tree book once stated that the white pine of our northeaster States was destined to disappear except for ornamental purposes. There are many reasons to believe that that time will never come, yet the nature and habits of the tree and the shortsightedness of the people make the statement more than a mere suspicion.
Not a great many years ago within the white pine region, there were magnificent stands of old growth pine. Every old inhabitant today will tell you how they stood on his father’s farm when he was a boy, their clear, straight trunks and gnarled flat tops high above everything else. Many an old house back in the country has floor boards and cupboard doors that are more than three feet wide which were made from such trees.
These old monarchs of the northern forests are gone now, except for the isolated trees or clumps scattered widely over the region. A woodlot owner recently guided me several miles back into the hills in order to point out three magnificent pines which have been standing probably for more than 250 years. One could never mistake them from others of a later generation.
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The woman who indulges in carpenter-work seldom does much harm. She contents herself with trying to drive nails into the wall, and with experiments with mucilage. She drives her nails with great caution, and when she has loosened an inch or two of plaster she becomes alarmed, and resolves to let her husband assume the responsibility of inflicting further injury on the wall.
She has a profound faith in the value of mucilage as a substitute for glue, and hopefully attempts to mend china and furniture with it; but mucilage is as harmless as it is inefficient, and it is only on the rare occasions when it is used to mend the wheels of the clock that it does any permanent injury to anything.
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“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”
— Charlie Parker
“We believed punk rock existed through people like ATV and Mark Perry. He said, ‘Here’s a chord. Here’s another chord. Form a group.’ And we believed in the things that were being said. So, it became true.”
— Billy Childish, guitarist and vocalist for Thee Headcoats
During a recent trip to Seattle, my family and I spent a day at the Experience Music Project to see the exhibit on the band Nirvana and to take in the permanent and fantastic exhibit on the history of the electric guitar.
As my daughter Katy and I made our way through the Nirvana exhibit I was blown away by the T-shirts, posters, album covers and instruments that had been made by the musicians themselves in the Pacific Northwest’s punk scene. It reinforced something that I have long thought but have never expressed: Making furniture and making music is similar.
You can be establishment. You can be punk. Or you can be anywhere in between.
Me, I’m a more of a punk furniture maker. I have little interest in high-style pieces that were made for the ultra-rich – things that are elaborate and require immense technical skill. Yeah, I respect the hands and the training needed to carve a Newport shell or create a hunting scene in marquetry. But it has no connection to the way I live or my taste in objects.
I like three three chords. I like simple lines. I like music that was made without any hope of selling it to the masses. I like furniture that was made by unknown amateurs who made what they could with materials at hand and sometimes struck gold. I like music that was written, recorded, printed and distributed by the players. I like furniture that was designed, built, finished and used by its makers.
I like music that cannot be pegged to particular moment in pop history. I like furniture that could have been made in the 17th century or the 21st.
Where is this sort of furniture? It’s everywhere (outside of museums), and it’s invisible to most furniture historians.
Where do you find the plans for this furniture? You don’t. There really aren’t plans. This stuff is so basic and so animalistic that plans aren’t needed. But there are three chords. Three joints. A few basic tools. A few progressions.
After that it’s up to you.
— Christopher Schwarz
